How two women turned Kite Beach into a love letter to Dubai and bought 10,000 people together

Dubai: There are ideas that take years to develop and there are ideas that arrive fully formed, urgent and impossible to ignore. The We Love Dubai initiative was the second kind.

It started with a conversation. Marta Paniagua, Creative Director at Multilem Middle East, turned to her colleague Dorothee Anjos and said something along the lines of: we cannot just sit in the office and wait for something to happen. We need to do something.

That was less than two weeks ago. What followed was a sprint of creativity, community and quiet determination that culminated in one of the most genuinely moving public installations Dubai has seen in recent memory.

A heart made of faces

At Kite Beach from 5 to 12 April, a towering heart-shaped digital mosaic rose above the sand, its panels arranged in the colours of the UAE flag, red, white, green and black. But what filled those panels was not graphic design or stock imagery. It was people. Real faces, selfies taken by the thousands of residents who scanned a QR code, received a sticker, and added their portrait to a living, growing installation that became more beautiful with every person who joined it.

By the end, more than 10,000 entries had come in from residents representing over 130 nationalities. The mosaic did not just display the UAE flag. It was made of the people who live under it.

The women behind it

Marta has been in Dubai for twenty years. She arrived newly married, full of hope, and the city shaped her in ways she could not have predicted. "I feel deeply Spanish, that will always be part of who I am," she says, "but today I am proud to call Dubai home. It represents my present and my future."

Dorothee's story is equally layered. Half German, half French, with a Portuguese husband, she has moved seventeen times in her life and raised four children here in the UAE. "I don't think I have ever felt as home anywhere as much as I do here," she says as sure of her words as she can be.

Both women felt the same pull when the regional climate grew tense. Not to retreat, but to respond. To give the community a platform to say something true and collective and loud: that Dubai is home, and they are grateful for it.

Built on community, not budget

What makes the initiative even more remarkable is how it came together, as it is an entirely non-profit project. The creative community of Dubai rallied around the idea almost immediately, with an audiovisual company, a construction team, a print house for the stickers, a staffing agency and a media team all contributing their time and skills because they believed in what it stood for.

The permits, which in the events industry can take weeks or months to process, were issued by Dubai Tourism, Dubai Municipality and the RTA in under 48 hours.

The response from the public was equally overwhelming. Strangers offered free donuts, free ice cream, free pizza. People queued to be part of something they had not been told to care about. They just did.

"We thought it is a nice idea," Dorothee admits. "We weren't expecting people to be so eager to join us and to be part of this initiative."

Why now

There is an emotional intelligence behind the timing of We Love Dubai that both women articulate clearly. When things are easy, unity is easy. When things are not, it means something different entirely.

"In those rainy days, literally, being united means something," Dorothee says. "Being united when things aren't easy, when we need to be resilient, when we are facing challenges, this is when we need to feel united. And this is what we're doing here."

Marta frames it similarly. "At a time when there is so much noise and competing narratives, it's more important than ever to listen to the real voices of the people who live here. Because this city is not just where we live. It becomes part of who we are."

The installation drew people who had nothing in common except their postcode and their feeling. Different cultures, different languages, different stories, one shared expression. One heart. One city.

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A dream still waiting

The installation at Kite Beach may have come down, but Dorothee carries a bigger vision with her. Her dream is to see all those faces, all 10,000 of them and more, projected onto the Burj Khalifa. A city's worth of portraits illuminating the world's most iconic tower as a tribute to the people who made it their home.

For now, it is just a dream. The initiative is non-profit and the funds are not there. But if We Love Dubai has proven anything in the past two weeks, it is that when this community decides something matters, it finds a way to make it happen.

If you want to be part of the next chapter, the mosaic is still growing. Scan, submit, share. Add your face to the heart, and as the name says 'We Love Dubai'.